Modern radar systems may utilize various types of antennas to provide a variety of functions. Such functions may include, for example, intelligence-gathering (e.g., signals intelligence, or SIGINT), direction finding (DF), electronic countermeasure (ECM) or self-protection (ESP), electronic support (ES), electronic attack (EA) and the like. Providing such multi-function capability from a single aperture to modern platforms is becoming an essential requirement. However, due to the limited space available on size-constrained platforms such an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), placing the various types of antennas is becoming a challenge.
It is contemplated that certain functions may be provided utilizing shared hardware resources. For instance, ECM and EA applications or the like may share the same directional antenna system in order to reduce the number of antenna systems required on the platform. However, some applications such as direction finding (DF) cannot utilize the conventional directional antenna system because they require significantly different architecture or radiation pattern. Therefore, a separate DF interferometer antenna arrays would be required in order to facilitate direction finding for the small platforms.
Therein lies the need to provide a common shared asset aperture that may be utilized as a directional antenna or a DF interferometer.